Australian Media Regulation - Public Interest Test

On March 12, 2013 the Federal Government of Australia launched a new policy proposal for regulating the media. It is the official response to the two media inquiries covered previously on this blog: The Convergence Review and the Frankenstein Inquiry. (This mirrors some of the activities and debates now playing out in the UK, following the Levenson Inquiry).

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy put the proposals forward in a press conference, that to my mind at least, did not convey the level of intensity that is required for governments to launch major policy initiatives, especially ones centred around public interest theory.

Indeed, the biggest news in the policy proposal is the idea for a public interest media advocate. Here are some of the points highlighted in the Ministers Press Release:


These reforms include:

• A press standards model which ensures strong self-regulation of the print and online news media.
• The introduction of a Public Interest Test to ensure diversity considerations are taken into account for nationally significant media mergers and acquisitions.
• Modernising the ABC and SBS charters to reflect their online and digital activities.
• Supporting community television services following digital switchover by providing them a permanent allocation of a portion of Channel A.
• Making permanent the 50% reduction in the licence fees paid by commercial television broadcasters, conditional on the broadcast of an additional 1460 hours of Australian content by 2015(Minister Conroy Press Release)

The micro-politics are of some interest because the current Australian parliament has seven members who are independent of the ruling Australian Labor Party (ALP) or the conservative Liberal-National Party coalition. If they support the ALP the legislation will succeed. (The Age coverage)The success of the policy initiative will result in more extreme "journalism" - what must surely be characterised as News Corporation executives embarrassing the profession with ideological tirades against an elected government.

As for News Corporation, what can one say? Sydney's Telegraph, a tabloid, and another News Corp publication, ran its report under the headline, "Julia Gillard's henchman attacks freedom of the press." Then the photo of Conroy dressed in what is generally regarded as the military clothing of Joseph Stalin.

The evidence is clear from this coverage why a Public Interest Test is needed in Australia. Surely the coverage by the News Corporation press proves how the public interest is rejected in favour of the status quo.

This is not to say the Fairfax press has been any better. The Age (Melbourne) and The Sydney Morning Herald are also opposed.    

Prince Harry - a digital case in point

Those many millions of republicans who do not care about royalty and inherited privilege groaned a collective sigh of despair this week as news emerged of military exploits by England's Prince Harry. The reports prompted republicans to say, "What an idiot!"

There were two parts to the reports about his action as an Apache helicopter pilot in the British Army: He admitted to killing Afghans, possibly Taliban  from the safety of his airborne machine, plus he considered his expertise in the theatre of warfare to be informed by his heavy participation with PlayStation game consoles. Here is a case of  cause and effect - a player of computer video games offering a claim to killing skill due to playing computer games.

As readers of this blog and my 2011 book Uprising will know, I am disinclined to play the tired academic game of pretending that technological determinism is unproven. All the evidence suggests that human history is the result of knowledge that translates to innovation through the combined might of technology, industry and business. Cause and effect - albeit uneven.

As my friend and colleague Christian Fuchs has noted,  there is still plenty of debate about technological determinism.New Media and Society I suspect much of it is the result of a conservative  intention to assert the absence of a relationship between human agency and human impact because this would lead to critical engagement with innovation and technology itself. In turn, that would lead to suggestions that human beings generate pollutants which in turn create changed atmospheric conditions and global warming/climate change. Denialists are as they do: backed with major financial  support from the corporations who have a lot to lose from changes in human behavior. There's a nice piece by Robert Mann on denialist strategy in The Monthly magazine. The Monthly

Meanwhile Prince Harry puts the digital pieces together for everyone, perhaps unwittingly. After all, royals are not expected to be intellectuals. They are however expected to be circumspect. The following effort suggests that he knows enough to make sure everyone shares the blame for killing Taliban, Afghans and innocents - the casualties of war.

"If there's people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we'll take them out of the game, I suppose," he said. "Take a life to save a life … the squadron's been out here. Everyone's fired a certain amount."Guardian

It was the gaming mention that caught my eye.

The prince, who was in charge of firing the Apache's Hellfire air-to-surface missiles, rockets and 30mm gun, called his job a "joy" in interviews released on Monday.

"It's a joy for me because I'm one of those people who loves playing PlayStation and Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think I'm probably quite useful," he said. Guardian 

Here we are with a fresh definition of "joy."

I recently argued in "Killing the Thing You Love: Predator Drones, Wilful Neglect and the End of the Internet," that the Internet is rapidly becoming nothing like what it was envisioned. Breen article This is due to a number of forces at work, not least of which is that idiots rip the original meaning from language and redefine it for nefarious and ignorant purposes: Harry describing killing with high technology game-based digital technology as "joy."

Republicans -  at least defend the language!  

It is probably unwise to give the last word to the Taliban, but here goes. In an article in The Guardian headlined Taliban retaliate after Prince Harry compares fighting to a video game, a spokesperson (it's going to be a man!) said::

"I think he has a mental problem, that's why he is saying it is a game," he said. "These kind of people live like diplomats in Afghanistan, they can't risk themselves by standing against the mujahideen." The Guardian

Whatever we make of that - the voice is clear: this is not a game.

Two National Government Inquiries - regulation

Two National Government Inquiries into press and media behavior with one response – regulation. 

The UK and Australian Governments conducted broad ranging investigations into the performance of news organizations and journalists in their respective nations. The final reports are now out: An inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press (Leveson Report, 29 November 2012 levesoninquiry) and the Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation (Finkelstein Report, 28 February 2012 Australian Finkelstein). The Australian report showed its colors by subtitling itself, Report to the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. It was arguably forward looking, while the UK inquiry was reviewing history. 

Indeed, on 13 July 2011 Prime Minister David Cameron told the UK Parliament the reasons why the inquiry was being held. It was impossible to avoid the role News International and the now defunct News of the World played in bringing about the inquiry.  Leveson’s report started with the PM’speech. In republishing the speech to Parliament Leveson allowed Cameron’s words to repeat the allegation. The first line of Leveson reads, as did the first line of Cameron’s speech to Parliament:

“In recent days, the whole country has been shocked by the revelations of the phone

hacking scandal.” (page 1). Or as they say in Coventry, ‘Hello Rupert!’

 Leveson was directed by the Terms of Reference. And while the case was generated by the straw that broke the camel’s back, phone hacking, the peppering of the report with direct references to News International makes for a sorry tale of journalistic failure at an institutional level. The first part of the report Terms of Reference became its title:

1.       To inquire into the culture, practices, and ethics of the press… (page 4)

It is impossible to miss the point that the target was News International.

The second part of the inquiry will examine the extent of unlawful or improper conduct

at the News of the World and other newspapers… (page 4) …

(c) the extent to which the current policy and regulatory framework has failed

including in relation to data protection; (page 5)…

3. To inquire into the extent of unlawful or improper conduct within News International,

other newspaper organisations and, as appropriate, other organisations within the

media, and by those responsible for holding personal data. (Page 5)

It’s easy to criticise an institution with poor professional practices like News International. It is much more difficult to reform an entire system.

As I have noted previously on the Uprising blog, the challenge for newspaper journalism is digitization. Newspapers and the journalists who work in them are not in a happy place these days. It is pretty easy to see how the phone hacking scandal took place: digital technologies allowed reasonably smart people to gain information that had previously been private and then use that private information to sell newspapers, in public. 

How can a newspaper system be reformed when it is based on sixteenth century technology? 

The response to that question has multiple levels.

The first is that criminal acts have been determined to be just that and the editors and journalists from the News of the World will have to explain their phone hacking behaviour in court. That will be significant because the laws that apply to data in the digital era are not clearly transferable.

Criminals are redefined in the new digital context.  Historical antecedents for criminal redefinitions associated with new technology: when the printing press emerged, when radio started playing popular music and pirate radio stations went offshore…

Here is a hypothetical question: How long will it be before cell phone hacking is legal?

Second, philosophically the challenge is how to deploy jurisprudence in a situation where it is still in formation. The answer is that no one should be treated in the way people were treated in the UK phone hacking scandal. Jurisprudence is a low level solution to the social problems that emerge from the unregulated Internet.  

Third, elsewhere I have written about the way wilful neglect plays out.  Predator Drones, Wilful Neglect 

This is a bigger issue than what we can ever hope to cover, although it may be helpful to assess traditional media in the light of new media and see how wilful neglect is always part of the dilemma of liberalism – what types of human action will civil society tolerate? The challenge of the Internet is that it allows users to overlook previously unacceptable forms of human behaviour because they appear in the Internet context, not the print media context. The Internet offers new opportunities for predatory and pecuniary action, including redefinitions of privacy and publicness. It magnifies and redefines these terms and the concepts associated with them. 

It is hardly surprising then that the UK and Australian inquiries both opted for regulation, as a statutory system of public interest concerns.

Leveson recommended an independent self regulator for the UK…but as I write that is in the process of becoming a system of non statutory regulation. guardian leveson comment1

It is also no surprise that the majority of media owners, practitioners and many journalists have opposed regulation.
In contrast there are those who know the system from the inside and recognise the need for a new method. Please see my blog November 17, 2011 about Eric Beecher’s call for a public press funding system in Australia.Beecher See also Lachlan Murdoch on his grandfather, Keith, Rupert’s father. Lachlan

 In Australia the call was for a system ‘To rectify existing and emerging weaknesses in the current regulatory structures it is recommended that there be established an independent statutory body which may be called the ‘News Media Council’, to oversee the enforcement of standards of the news media…’ (p. 290).

The Australian recommendation set the cat amongst the pigeons as well. This inquiry set out to make sense of new media. In contrast Leveson set out to understand what happened in the phone hacking scandal and where possible offer a political solution to the view that News international has unreasonable influence in the UK. These were two very different inquiries.

 In sharing outcomes that recommended regulation as a solution both inquiries reinforced my view that we need an expanded public education campaign about regulation.      

Australian Cultural Digital Facilitation: Position Paper

Position Paper

 Australian Cultural Digital Facilitation (ACDF)

National Questions of Culture-Commerce-Convergence

The Australian Federal Government’s Convergence Review together with the National Cultural Policy Review have provoked questions about funding and continued public support for the cultural sector. Australian national interest is reflected in cross-party funding over many years for cultural institutions – Australian Film and Television / Screen Australia, Triple J, Australian Broadcasting Corporation and more recently support for new media and creative industries. (See for example http://australia.gov.au/topics/culture-history-and-sport/cultural-institutions). It is a growing and complex set of demands that combines culture with commerce and convergence.

Traditional support for national cultural institutions is coming under pressure and must change in the electronic (that is Internet / digital) environment. Increasing numbers of Australians receive their cultural artefacts – cinema, music, television programming (sport and entertainment) and information services through the Internet.

The digital sector, or Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is the growth sector of the economy, and severely at risk from foreign content (note especially the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement). Australian cultural producers are disadvantaged. Most content now moves through the ICT network direct to consumers.

Telecommunication firms manage the network, with Telstra as the “incumbent” infrastructure owner dominating and given special treatment by the Federal Government to the tune of $11 bn to support its business.  Telstra is the digital gatekeeper and does not operate in a genuine marketplace, but as a protected (subsidised) provider.

The emergence of the National Broadband Network (NBN), to which Telstra connects along with all telecommunication companies (Optus, Vodaphone and others) will generate massive turnover. (Over and above the estimated current annual $40 bn turnover of the telecom companies).

The NBN growth projections suggest increased costs for consumers as Telstra and the NBN maximise profits. Most of the pressure for content will be from global, read US sources. This will ultimately challenge then undermine local content and creative industry producers.

The question is how to maximise support for Australian culture in this new context. Old and established approaches to funding support are unlikely to be effective as they will be costly, while freighted with traditional appeals from powerful interests.

Australian Cultural Digital Facilitation (ACDF) is the answer –a levy on all telecommunications (arts and culture) content transactions over the network. Just as the telecommunications firms charge consumers for downloads over the Internet, so the Australian Government charge the profit making firms for facilitating the flow of culture over the network.

It is a matter of justice.

The ACDF would levy a 2-5% fee on all telecom providers (not Internet Service Providers). This would include all cultural content transported by all operators using the Australian national telecommunications infrastructure / NBN: rate of levy is equal to 2-5% of gross revenues for wholesale and retail business. The levy would operate on all network traffic – terrestrial, fibre or cloud based digital transport (no exceptions) flowing through the national network. The fee would be only levied once per algorhythmic datum. For example, if a film was stored on a Hollywood server, transported to Australia, moved to a server in Melbourne to be downloaded on to a mobile phone in Broken Hill, the cost of that transaction would be levied one time – at the point it was downloaded by the user. The subscriber’s telecommunication provider would calculate the value of the transaction and pay that fee into an account, to be distributed quarterly to the collection agency.  

 The ACDF will produce the following results:

·      progressively engage the marketplace with culture in Australia;

• guarantee financial support for cultural industries;
• reduce and possibly remove cultural funding demands from Federal and State budgets;
• engage telecoms and ICTs with nation building, but not on their self-interested terms;
• offer an innovative approach to social provisioning;
• connect the telecommunication companies with the Australian public.   

The telecos would pay the fee to an ACDF Authority / Australia Council. Mandated distribution to all sectors of the creative community would be managed by this independent institution.

Marcus Breen

Banning YouTube in Pakistan

Resistance to digital media and its previously unfettered circulation is moving apace.
Lat week the US Government reportedly asked Google to take down clips from Innocence of Muslims, the film that has generated riots in the Muslim world - that includes Sydney, Australia, not quite an Islamic stronghold!

"...In Pakistan, the prime minister, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, ordered the suspension of YouTube over the "blasphemous" Muhammad film."
Call to Ban You Tube

Escalation of this fury should be expected. The film offers a pretext for anti-US sentiment. Proving that media is much more powerful as a mobilizing tool than almost any other force.

Anti-Muslim film, the Internet = riots and revolt

This week the cultural collisions continue apace, as theocrats on one side of a religious argument prompt outrage from theocrats on the other. One side is racist, the other outraged. Fundamentalism always ends like this: bloody murder. The unfortunate aspect of this particular event is the inevitable hardening of positions. The more we are on line the harder the positions get! The Internet is the era of the new fundamentalism.

What started as an as yet unknown plan by US based media producers who were spoken of as Iraeli-American (!who come up with this identifier and who in news rooms lets it into public circulation?) to make a film mocking the prophet Mohammad was more than a joke. It was probably intended as an affront to Islam. From the Moslem perspective it is blasphemy.

The US ambassador and embassy staff - US citizens - killed in Libya, burning of KFC and other US businesses destroyed late in the week as the matter escalates in intensity. And the film or extracts of it continue to circulate on the Internet. Here is an unintended consequence that I predicted within the jihad approach to resistance. In Uprising the jihad case study offered a view of the way this particular religious and social movement would be unassailable as the unique characteristics of ideological grooming played out. Fundamentalist excess has an inevitability about it.  Here it is, another step towards a conflagration that is motivated by the circulation of offensive media on the Internet. (It is worth reflecting on the alternative: has any one ever killed a US representative, burned down a KFC or sacked an American government compound because of pornography. If anyone knows of a case please share your knowledge).

On 13 September 2012 the US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was reported in her usual high handed lecture mode berating everyone who might not like the US! It's a big list. Why does Hilary Clinton not back down on this? The film is a disgrace and she said as much - thank you Hilary! Then went on to her preferred position - referring to "reasonsable people" and "responsible leaders" who need to do something to defend the good and the great - that is the US and its citizens and representatives.

Here we are again with an example of the standard language of the Enlightenment ("reasonable" and "responsible"). It is thrown around as if the use of this language is followed by the kind of behavior nice people prefer and practice. (Me too, by the way!) I would prefer not to have the film made and for it not to circulate and for everyone to live together in peace. That is not about to happen. The Internet has accentuated the identity politics of every religious and other group who seeks reinforcement of their prejudices. The new fundamentalism is here now.     

Overlay this with the US insistence on free speech. As Cass Sunstein argued (and as I said in Uprising) there is a moment in the Internet era when the question of free speech must be visited, explored anew and if necessary rewritten. Purist perspectives on this ideal are a derivation of Enlightenment, pre-internet communication. The new media of the Internet is free in a contradictory way that cannot be sustained in line with US Constitutional ideas.

The US Government itself has moved to stop the circulation of the anti-Islam film, thereby making the case that it too recognizes that there is a limit to what can circulate (we know that already with Government sanctioned limits on some extremes of pornography, especially involving children.)

Google has other ideas as The Guardian reported:

"The search engine Google on Friday night rejected a request by the Obama administration to reconsider a decision to keep a clip from Innocence of Muslims online, Reuters reported."Guardian - read last paragraph

The response to the film as it circulated on the Internet offers another perspective on the relationship between media and social action, revolt and dissent. For media theorists, there's a lot of hard thinking to be done.

News Corporation again - change in digital

News Corp.’s Chief Digital Officer to Step Down as Company Prepares to Split

New York Times 24 August, 2012

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/news-corp-s-chief-digital-officer-to-step-down-as-company-prepares-to-split/

Here is the first paragraph of the story:
"News Corporation’s chief digital officer, Jonathan Miller, will step down, the company announced on Thursday, in the latest example of an executive departing since News Corporation said it would split the publishing business from the rest of the company."

I have held off commenting or blogging about News for a while because I wanted to see what played out. Here we can see the beginnings of the end of the old News organization, as the digital flails. And it will continue to flail, perhaps ending the News Corporation, News International era in newspapers.

I have some interest in this story from a professional and personal perspective that stretches back to the days when I was a consultant with the Victorian Government's Department of State Development (1994-1996). Along with John Rimmer and Terry Dyson and a host of bureaucrats we set up Multimedai Victoria, after undertaking a research project at CIRCIT (Centre for International Research on Communication and Information Technologies), where I was the director of the cultural industries research program. As a consultant I had the good fortune to meet dozens of entrepreneurs from around the state, the country and the world working in the early start up days of the Internet.

One of the people I already knew - we had been on an invited panel to discuss Intellectual Property and Australian cultural industries at Film Australia - was Greg Clark. Greg had been an IBM executive and a physicist with a PhD. I liked him a lot. Urbane, easy to talk with and confident with the ability to self deprecate, as well as blow his own trumpet. He sounded very Australian.

In the mid-1990s he became the head of News Corporations digital initiatives and ended up working out of the Fox studio lot in Hollywood. I visited him there in 1995. It was clear that he had all the technical skill in the world to manage new media. In those days it was satellite and digital signaling for television - all of which worked out quite well for News with Fox News and Sky in Europe, the UK especially and the US. After doing the policy work for News to consolidate that side of the business Greg left News Corporation. He had a wonderful place over looking Central Park in New York City: at least that's what he told me. We spoke on occasion until 2003 after which I lost contact with him.

The reason I mention Greg Clark is as follows. There was a clear impression that News was determined to take the early mover advantage that the Internet offered. It did not know what it was doing but it knew it had to do something. Greg Clark was a scientist who knew a lot about signaling and satellites. He like all the rest of us knew very little about what would work - the creative destruction that the Internet would render to established media.

Incredibly, this is still the case. Jonathan Miller's departure is another in a long line of executives who do not know what to do about the twists and turns of the Internet.

When the Levenson Inquiry hands down its findings, there will be more challenges for News, as we are reminded that News had no idea that the behaviour of their journalists was criminal, uncivilized and brutalizing. More flailing which in the phone hacking case was about letting wild horses run free until someone or something caught up. The law and the British Prime Minister did just that. And the findings, like the criminal charges against former News Corporation (News of the World) editors and journalists will come during a Tory administration! Go figure?